Fiction Writer’s Toolshed | Practical Tools for Authors
You’re writing a scene. You need a better image, a fact you don’t know, or a reason a character would do what comes next. Something belongs here, but you don’t know exactly what it is yet.
My current best approach is to put a note inside square brackets: [ ]. Mark the gap, cross it, and keep writing. Then return deliberately to do the work you left open.
Those two keys can give you a temporary bridge through a draft. They let you preserve what you’re reaching for without having to solve every detail before you write the next sentence.
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Fiction Writer’s Toolshed
Fiction Writer Help: 2 Keys on the Keyboard that Build a Bridge | ep 016
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Lay down a plank
Imagine a construction site with a trench in the ground. Eventually, there’ll be a proper walkway, with the things that make it finished. Right now, you need to get from one side to the other.
In the image I’m using, someone lays down a board. It isn’t beautiful or permanent. It gets you across.
That’s what brackets do in a fiction draft. They cover a place you don’t know yet so you can keep moving through the work.
I like calling it a gap. A gap doesn’t have to mean you failed or didn’t prepare enough. Something belongs here. You’ll put it here later.
Don’t switch jobs in the middle of the scene
A moment ago, you were moving through a room with a character. Now you’re researching, deciding, outlining, or looking up whether a pocket watch existed in 1873.
Maybe the room smelled like old smoke, but you used that image already. You start looking up what a fire smells like a week later. Then fire pictures. Then somehow you’re reading about Mastodon’s new guitarist.
How did we get here?
A bracket gives you another choice:
The room smelled like [something better than old smoke].
You’ve marked what needs attention without leaving the scene. Research and revision still have a job to do. You’ve chosen when to do that job.
If naming, worldbuilding or rewriting the opening keeps replacing the next scene, notice six ways perfectionism can stall your fiction draft. The diagnostic can help you see the pattern; brackets give you a way to leave a useful note and keep moving.
A bracket can hold a whole scene
The gap might be larger than a phrase. You know Jonah needs to talk to his father, but you aren’t ready to write the conversation.
You could stop and go to the couch to think it through. You could also leave yourself this note first:
[Scene where Jonah asks his father for money. Surface topic: money. Real topic: whether Jonah has been forgiven.]
That isn’t polished prose. It’s a board across the work site.
Now the document contains the thing you need to think about. You can keep drafting and come back to that conversation with a useful cue.
Research gaps
You need a fact. What would a rural doctor have carried in his bag in 1934? How long would a particular journey take? How does a process work?
If that question is pulling you out of the draft, mark it:
[Research: what would a rural doctor carry in his bag / 1934?]
Depending on the piece, that research may matter a lot. The bracket preserves the question so you can give it attention later, instead of turning this writing session into a search session.
Language gaps
You want a description to hit harder, but you aren’t ready to shape it perfectly. Put down some words that point toward the effect:
The sky looked [bruised, metallic, wintry, threatening].
Or you know what a smile should communicate:
She smiled like [polite but dangerous].
Those notes give you something to refine. You might even come back to a phrase and decide it works well enough to keep for now.
For a character’s expression, you could mark [not exactly sadness, something more with shame]. You’ve kept the direction without stopping for the perfect word.
Plot gaps
You know something needs to happen, but you don’t know the mechanics yet.
[Plot: need a believable reason the phone is dead]
Or:
[Something here forces them to spend the night in the same house]
This kind of question can cascade. If they need to stay in that house, maybe they need to be in a different neighborhood first. Maybe the introduction has to change. Suddenly you’re changing the whole blueprint.
Pause. You might change your mind about the solution before you need to change everything around it. Bracket the gap and keep going.
You’ll still need a believable mechanism. The note keeps that work visible.
Character gaps
Your instinct says Nadia would trust Robert here, but you don’t understand why yet. Instead of stopping to settle it immediately, you can write:
[Why does Nadia trust Robert here? It can’t just be attraction. Maybe he knows something about her brother.]
You could also stop the note after the question. You don’t need to invent an answer just to use the tool.
Maybe you know John will say yes, but the choice needs to cost him more. Mark that intention. Give yourself something to examine as the character and story develop.
Emotional gaps
You know where you want a conversation to turn, but you don’t yet know how to earn that turn.
[This is where the conversation stops being about the dishes and becomes about the divorce.]
The change might happen through a few words or across the scene. The bracket holds the intention while you work out the writing that will carry it.
Another note might ask the silence after a line to do more damage than the line itself. You’ve marked the effect you want, so you can return and make it happen.
The courage gap is optional
Sometimes I want to bring a piece of my own experience into the work. This isn’t a requirement. It’s a choice about something I want to make.
I might note that I want to bring in my feelings about when my dad passed away. For me, the bracket gives that intention a container. I don’t have to unpack it all at that moment.
I might come back and use it. I might change my mind. Getting the intention down may have been useful by itself.
You get to decide whether personal material belongs in the work, and whether you want to approach it now or later.
Return deliberately to the brackets
The plank gets you across. Then you come back and build what belongs there.
I’ll look at my bracketed notes when I have time to think but can’t sit down to write. What do I need to be thinking about? The question is already in the document.
I can dictate an idea or write something into my phone, then bring it back into the draft. A note becomes a little bit of prose. Then more prose. Before I know it, that gap has become part of the manuscript.
Try it the next time you hit a gap. Put a question, an intention, or a possible direction inside square brackets. Lay down the plank, cross it, and keep moving.
Then choose a time to return deliberately. The bracket helped you continue; filling it is part of finishing.
Another tool for when you don’t know what to write next
In Writer’s Block Solution (That Actually Works), I use story math to look at how a story’s setup and build support its payoff. Writing an answer you might change gives you something to read and work on.
A bracket lets you leave a question or a note about what you want to happen. Both tools help you keep writing when you don’t have all the answers yet.
Fiction Writer’s Toolshed: Practical Tools for Authors is a Make Exist podcast hosted by Tim Kearney. It offers hands-on training for fiction writers to diagnose writing problems, build their skills, and finish more work.